


Conversion

by Atoria (vulcan_slash_robot)



Category: Totalcox - Fandom
Genre: BDSM, Collars, Ice, M/M, Presumed Death, in the prequel bit:, it was all comic books and feelings until it was suddenly kinky, lab accident more like origin story, pain play, rope play, superhero au, suspension play
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 12:22:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16832521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulcan_slash_robot/pseuds/Atoria
Summary: Jesse is a voice actor, John works in an R&D lab. Terrorists attack, and life takes a sharp right turn toward vigilante justice.





	1. part 1

**Author's Note:**

> One of my very oldest works, original publication date lost to time because it's been moved so many times but I want to say it's originally from about....2013? Sadly this means it's definitely never going to be finished, but feel free to enjoy a few angst-sprinkled scenes about John discovering superpowers.

**November 10, 7:00 pm**  
  
“Oh thank GOD you didn’t notice that move,” John laughed with relief.  
  
“What—?” Jesse scanned the chessboard, looking for overlooked consequences of his last move, all he’d done was place his rook between their queens, protecting himself by ensuring that his queen was out of the line of fire, but…”Oh _dammit I could have had your queen for free!_ ”  
  
“Too late, I’m in charge now,” John reached for his queen with a leather-gloved hand, fumbling the piece slightly but managing not to knock anything over. He was getting better at fine tasks like this, but the gloves did still tend to be in the way. He needed them though. If he went around handling brass chess pieces with his bare hands, Jesse soon wouldn’t be able to touch them at all.  
_________________________________________________________________  
  
 **November 4, 10:00 am**  
  
Jesse stepped out of the recording booth for a much-needed break. Voice acting work was scarce for an obvious American in the middle of England, especially one who had trouble with convincing accents, but he’d finally landed a role as a cartoon villain and it was the most fun he’d had at work in years. The gravelly voice required a certain number of smoke breaks every day to maintain though; Jesse could only hope the cigarettes wouldn’t be too hard to shake off after the gig ended. He pulled out his cell phone as he walked outside, hoping for an update from his husband. John’s lab was being inspected by potential investors today.  
  
He flipped open the phone. Ten missed calls? That seemed like a bit much, and none of them were from John’s phone. A feeling of vague dread stole over him as he realized that they were all from within the last half hour. Before he could try calling the number, his phone went off silently. Incoming call from the same number.   
  
He clicked answer and raised the phone shakily to his ear. “Hello?”  
  
“Is this Mr. Jesse Cox-Bain?” came the immediate reply.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Mr. Cox-Bain, this is the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. Your husband was brought in earlier with severe trauma; we recommend that you come immediately. His condition is critical.”  
  
A carton of smokes hit the pavement as Jesse dashed back inside to grab his coat. He ran over them with his car two minutes later.  
_________________________________________________________________  
  
 **November 4, 10:25 am**  
  
Jesse rounded the corner into the appropriate waiting room at the hospital, out of breath and out of his mind with worry. He spotted one of John’s close coworkers in a chair near the door. He struggled for a minute to recall her real name, then gave up. He knew the nickname John used for her, that would be good enough.   
  
“Dodger?” he hazarded, “What happened? Have the doctors said anything?”  
  
The diminutive young woman looked up at him through a fringe of bright green hair. She had obviously been crying, which did not instill optimism in Jesse.  
  
“Jesse, I…I’m so sorry,” she choked out, “He—there was a man, during the investors’ tour, he had a bomb and…and…” she took a deep breath. “John saved us, all of us. They were on a catwalk looking over the production floor for that coolant we’ve been working on, and the guys had the vats open for inspection, and, when that man said he had a bomb, TB—I mean, John—didn’t even hesitate, he just went for him. He tackled the guy, right over the edge and into one of the vats. The coolant absorbed the explosion, but John…” she teared up again and covered her face with her hands. “I’m so sorry, Jesse.”  
  
Jesse stood numbly, trying to process what he had just been told. John couldn’t be…no, the hospital had said critical condition. He was alive. He must be. That had been twenty minutes ago, though, and twenty minutes could be a long time where “critical condition” was concerned. He looked up as a doctor entered the room.   
  
“Mr. Cox-Bain?” Jesse nodded. “Follow me, please.”  
  
The doctor’s somber tone had done no more to raise Jesse’s hopes than Dodger’s tears had, and he followed the doctor into the intensive care unit with a terrible fear swelling in his chest. He felt ready to break down at any second. The doctor stopped in front of a curtain and turned to Jesse.  
  
“Before you see him, you should be prepared,” the doctor explained calmly. “I heard your friend telling you what happened?” Jesse nodded again, trying to keep control. “There is very little damage apparent on the surface, the substance they landed in distributed the force of the blast very effectively. The shockwave that hit him must still have been tremendous though, we’re seeing signs of trauma everywhere. But…the biggest problem is that we can’t seem to warm him up.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“His internal body temperature was below freezing when he was brought in. We’ve tried everything, but we cannot seem to get it above twenty-one degrees Celsius, he’s barely functioning.”  
  
“How…how much is that Fahrenheit?” Jesse’s brow furrowed. He’d had some time to get used to metric measurements since moving here to be with John, but temperatures were still tricky. He hoped he had converted this one wrong.  
  
“Only about seventy degrees. I’m sorry sir, he probably doesn’t have much time left. I thought you should know before you saw him.”  
  
Jesse squeezed his eyes shut, burying the lower half of his face in his right hand and hugging himself tightly with his left arm. This was it. This was the worst. He knew John worked in dangerous conditions, and he dreaded news like this every day. Even still, now that it had happened he was no more prepared than anyone ever has been to hear that the person he loved most was living on borrowed time.  
  
“I’m sorry,” the doctor repeated. “Do you still want to see him?”  
  
Jesse nodded furiously, blinking back tears. He moved his hand out of the way of his mouth and hugged himself with both arms. “Yeah…yeah,” he managed, “I should be with him.”  
  
The doctor pulled aside the curtain, revealing the pitiful sight of John’s hospital bed. Jesse’s breath caught in his throat as he took in the scene. John’s body was almost invisible beneath layers of warming pads and networks of wires; an oxygen mask was strapped to his face; a bank of bulky life-support machines whirred away on the far side of the bed. There was a chair close to the head of the bed, on the near side. Jesse sat down, and leaned close to his husband’s expressionless face. John’s lips were faintly blue. Jesse reached out to stroke his cheek, and had to fight back the tears again as he felt for himself how cold the man was. Gently, he took John’s hand in both of his and raised it to his face, just holding it against his lips and wishing to wake up from this nightmare of a situation.  
  
“Mr. Cox-Bain…” the doctor ventured cautiously, “I hate to make this any worse, but you need to be prepared for something.”  
  
Fresh heartbreak showed on Jesse’s face as he looked up at the doctor.  
  
“Sir…if your husband’s condition doesn’t improve within a few hours, then it’s not going to. You may have a difficult decision to make.” The doctor looked meaningfully at the life support machines. Jesse stopped resisting the tears.  
_________________________________________________________________  
  
 **November 4, 9:00 pm**  
  
John woke to total darkness.  
  
The last thing he remembered clearly was plunging into the vat of industrial coolant, everything since then was indistinct and dreamlike. There had been faint voices, and the beep and hum of medical machinery, but most of all there had been a terrible, feverish heat. He recalled someone saying early on that they needed more heat, more blankets, more warming pads. He’d tried to stop them, to tell them no, but his brain was already so fogged with the heat that he couldn’t make himself understood.   
  
Jesse had been there, holding his hand, crying. John had the sense that he’d stayed with him for hours, maybe longer, without hope but unwilling to leave. Others, doctors, had come and gone, bringing news and asking questions. Jesse had sent them away, time after time, until finally he seemed to make a decision.   
  
The beep and hum of the machines had stopped. John had felt the oppressive heat begin to fade. He had felt Jesse’s beard against his forehead and heard him whisper, “I’m sorry. I love you.” Tears and kisses had rained on John’s face briefly, then Dodger had come and taken Jesse away. Doctors had made notes on charts. He wanted to tell them to wait, that he was starting to feel better, but he still couldn’t move. Relieved of the heat but exhausted, he had blacked out.  
  
Now he was alone, and it was dark. He was lying on something hard, and something else seemed to be over his face. He lifted his hand to investigate, and found he’d been covered with a sheet. Why would someone leave a sheet over his face?  
  
He pushed it away and sat up. He was on a long, hard table in a room filled with other long, hard tables, which had people covered in white sheets on them. No lights were on and none of the others were moving. Oh. Oh no. He looked down at himself. Sure enough, he was naked but for a tag around his toe marked “Dr. Johnathan Cox-Bain, age 30, time of death 6:30 pm, 4 November” as well as some serial numbers and other medical data.   
  
This was all horribly wrong, someone had made a mistake. He checked his pulse to be sure, and found it as strong as ever. He was wondering where he might find some pants and complain to someone in charge when a terrible thought struck him. Jesse. Jesse must think he was dead. _Shit_. He loved his husband to pieces but the American was not known for making the best decisions under stress; he was the sort John would order a suicide watch on if he were observing this situation from the outside.  
  
He jumped down from the table and ripped off the toe tag, grabbing the sheet and throwing it around himself. He silently thanked his annoying college friends for dragging him to so many fraternity parties as he deftly tied the sheet into a toga before fleeing the room. Somehow, he passed no one on his way out. He burst through the outer doors into the pouring rain, pausing only for a second to get his bearings.  
  
The only important thing was to get home, before Jesse could do anything stupid.  
___________________________________________________________________  
  
November 4, 11:30 pm  
  
Jesse couldn’t sleep. He’d tried, he wanted nothing more than to slip away into dreams and leave this world behind, maybe even forever….no, John wouldn’t have wanted that. John had died to save lives, the last thing he’d want would be for Jesse to give up now. He sighed. His attempts to go to bed had only resulted in more crying and hugging John’s pillow, so he had ended up out here on the couch, wrapped in a blanket with a glass of scotch in one hand and their wedding album in the other. He leafed through the pages, giggling sadly at the memories.  
  
Here they were together, standing at the altar in matching white tuxedos, here they were exchanging rings, sharing their first kiss as married men, cutting the cake, dancing their first dance…Jesse hurriedly brushed away another tear before it could land in the album and spoil the page. Every photo he had of John had suddenly become hundreds of times more valuable to him. He closed the book and took another sip of scotch. What he wouldn’t give to see John walk through that door right now and tell him none of it had been real.  
  
Thunder boomed out over the neighborhood. At least the weather seemed to be throwing John a proper wake. Yes. That was what he was doing, Jesse decided. A little private wake for his love, just him and his Talisker’s. He raised his glass to the framed picture on the wall from their honeymoon in France.   
  
“No more tears now…” he whispered, “Only dreams.” He brought the glass to his lips and tipped his head back.  
  
 _“JESSE WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING??”_  
  
A fine mist of scotch sprayed out across the living room; fortunately Jesse had the presence of mind to protect the wedding album against his chest. He chocked desperately for air; some of the Talisker’s had gone up his nose. He managed to half turn and look back over the couch at the toga-clad man standing in his hallway.  
  
“What was in that drink, Jesse?” John asked sternly. “For the love of God, tell me you haven’t taken any pills or anything.”  
  
Jesse coughed a few more times. “Well I was _pretty_ sure it was only whiskey, _until a fucking ghost appeared in my house_.” he finally rasped, looking suspiciously at his glass. Well Jesse, you’ve lost it, he thought, who knew all it would take was watching the love of your life die in your arms.  
  
“Jesse, I’m not dead, look at me,” John insisted walking toward the couch. “There must have been some mistake at the hospital, I’m fine. Just tell me you haven’t tried to hurt yourself.”  
  
“Of course not, imaginary hallucination man,” Jesse said with a raised eyebrow, coughing again as a fresh wave of caustic alcohol fumes hit his lungs. “John would hate that, as you clearly know because you are the fabrication of my brain having whiskey poured on it.”  
  
“Stop that, Jesse. I’m real, I’m right here. You’re not even drunk.”  
  
“If you’re real, how did you get in the house?”  
  
“Spare key at the back door, remember?” John sat down on the couch and placed a hand on Jesse’s blanket-wrapped shoulder. “Come on, love. Don’t tell me I walked all this way in a goddam sheet to spend the whole night arguing.”  
  
A thrill of mingled relief and uncertainty raced down Jesse’s spine at the touch. Tears welled up in his eyes one last time as he started to let himself believe it; John had come back. Suddenly he lunged forward and buried his face in the younger man’s chest. He sobbed brokenly into the makeshift toga.  
  
“J-John…”  
  
“Shhhh, easy dear,” John soothed him, rubbing his shoulders. “It’s going to be ok now.”  
  
“Y-you’re still so cold,” Jesse stuttered as he began to get a grip, “Did you really walk all the way here from the hospital in the rain?”   
  
“Well, mostly ran. I had to be sure you were safe,” John smiled down him, and Jesse returned a tearful grin. Gradually, they drifted together for a tender kiss.  
  
And stuck.  
  
Jesse felt that something was wrong almost before they touched, but it was too late. He could not have expected the searing cold that met his lips. It was like kissing an iceberg, but one that had been refrigerated in deep space for a few thousand years. He was able to pull back just far enough to see his look of panic mirrored on John’s face. What the hell??  
  
A conversation of muffled screams and grunts took place between them, punctuated by wild gestures and general flailing. Eventually John grabbed Jesse by the shoulders and forcefully dragged him into the kitchen, turning on the hot water and filling a mug. He poured the steaming liquid over their mouths, loosening the bond slightly. He repeated the process three times before they were able to peel themselves apart.   
  
Jesse collapsed into a kitchen chair, panting and rubbing the life back into his nearly-frostbitten lips.   
  
“What…the everloving… _FUCK_ …just happened?” he gasped.  
  
“I have no idea,” John replied. He looked down at the half-empty mug of hot water he was still holding in both hands. It had frozen solid.


	2. part 2

**November 10, 7:20 pm**

**  
**“Jesse….”

“What?” Jesse snapped. Chess was not his game, especially not against John. He was no idiot, but games of strategy and cunning against an opponent with a collection of PHD’s who could also read his face like a book seldom went well for him, and the more frustrated he got, the more stupid decisions he tended to make.

“Are you positive you want to make that move? You don’t want to try again?” John coaxed him.

“I don’t need you charity!” Jesse sighed. “….I’m not taking it back, but what did I miss this time?”

John winced apologetically and moved Jesse’s queen in the opposite of the direction Jesse had just moved it, placing it next to his own king.

“Yeah but…then you can just….OH GOD THE KNIGHT!!!” Jesse slapped his own forehead. “God dammit I was looking at the knight wrong how did I not see he was protecting that square and _that would have been checkmate wouldn’t it??_ ”

“Yes. I’m sorry, you had me, you just didn’t see it. You were doing well until then,” John tried to comfort him. “You sure you don’t want to do that over?”

“Tainted victory?” Jesse scoffed, “I’ll pass. I’ll corner you again, don’t you worry. Put my queen back.”

Jesse settled back into his chair a bit huffily, watching John correct the board and contemplate his next move. The corners of his mouth twitched a bit as he watched the other man’s overly serious expression. He couldn’t stay mad at John…not when he had come so close to losing him.

__________________________________________________________

**November 4, 11:40 pm**

“How are you doing that?” Jesse whispered fearfully.

“I’m not! I swear to god I’m not doing anything!” John upended the mug over the sink, watching the solid block of ice that had been steaming water moments ago slide out and land in the basin with a loud _clunk_.

Something that had been bothering Jesse finally clicked into place. “Hey…” he ventured, “How long did it take you to get here?”

“I dunno, over an hour. The hospital’s miles away.”

“On foot, right? And it was raining the whole time?”

“Yeah,” John wondered what he was driving at.

“Why aren’t you all wet, John?”

John looked down at himself. It was true, he was perfectly dry. If anything, there seemed to be a fine layer of frost over the sheet he was wearing.

“I…wha….let’s go find out, I guess?” he set out for the back door, closely followed by Jesse. John stepped out onto the back porch, still protected by the overhang of the roof. His breath formed dense clouds of fog in the humid air. Jesse’s didn’t. Cautiously, John extended an arm out into the downpour.

Raindrops pinged off his arm like hailstones, already frozen by the time they reached his skin. Some of the larger ones had enough time to splat into interesting shapes before shattering and falling away.

“I didn’t even notice,” John muttered, taking a few steps out onto the lawn, “I was so worried about you, I didn’t even notice…”

Crystallized raindrops littered the ground around him, and the grass for several inches around his bare feet frosted over almost instantly. He spread his arms wide and turned his face towards the sky, laughing as the raindrops continued to bounce harmlessly off of him. The ground around him was quickly becoming a veritable skating rink.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s amazing!” he shouted back to Jesse.

“John, I hate to rain on your parade—”

“It wouldn’t matter!”

“Har-de-har. But we have no idea what’s causing this, I think we should get you inside and, I dunno, not tempt fate.”

___________________________________________________________________

**November 5, 7:00 am**

Jesse blearily opened his eyes, trying to sort out his memories of the previous day. God, what a rollercoaster. From work to the hospital to having John show up in the house, and then to, well, whatever was wrong with John now.

At least it had worked out reasonably well in the end. He’d eventually gotten his slightly crazed husband to come in out of the rain and dressed him in warm—which is to say, insulative—clothing so that they could go to bed without waking up frozen together. He smiled slightly now and rolled over to cuddle up to the Brit. He found nothing but empty space on the other side of the bed.

A wave of despair washed over Jesse; hadn’t any of it been real? Maybe he’d spent so much time reading cartoon scripts lately that his mind had just built him a cartoon world of his own to retreat into at the loss of John.

He sat up with a knot in his chest, trying to prepare mentally for his first day as a widower. However, sitting up gave him a new angle on the room, bringing a lumpy pile of blankets next to his side of the bed into view. As he watched, the lump gave a sleepy little whimper and shuffled around to a more comfortable position. A bit of blanket was pushed aside in the process, revealing John’s face. Jesse sighed with relief and laid back down, reaching out a hand to touch his loved one.

He went to stroke John’s cheek, out of habit, but paused as his fingers encountered the layer of increasingly chilly air over his husband’s skin. Instead he reached for the man’s duvet-covered shoulder, gently nudging him awake.

“Whatcha doin’ on the floor, Doc?” Jesse asked playfully. He decided not to mention the scare he had gotten from waking up alone, it’d be better not to start the day on that note.

“It…was so hot up there,” John yawned, “I couldn’t get to sleep, then I looked at you and you were shivering. I reckoned this would be better for both of us.”

Jesse’s brow furrowed with concern. “Are you going to have to do that every night? Wouldn’t you rather stay out on the couch?”

“I thought about the couch, but I still want to be near you,” John explained, “Close encounters with one’s own mortality and such. Something about waking up in a morgue made me want to spend time with my husband. We’ll get a cot or something, then I’ll be able to sleep ‘with’ you without giving you hypothermia.”

Jesse sort of half smiled, continuing to rub John’s shoulder through the blankets. Was everything going to be this complicated now? 

___________________________________________________________________

**November 5, 10:00 am**

“Hey Jesse,” Dodger said with a kind smile as he welcomed her at the front door, “I’m glad you called, I’d rather not be alone either, to be honest.”

“Glad you could come, Dr. Lawson, come on in,” He’d had time to confirm her real name since their last meeting. “They let you take work off today?”

“You can call me Dodger, you know that. The whole lab is closed down for repairs and out of respect for TB,” she indicated the black band around her right arm. Dodger glanced away and bit her lip, wondering if she’d been too matter-of-fact about the situation. She reached out to hug Jesse as compensation for any insensitivity. “Anyways, you wanted help with something?”

“Uh, yeah,” Jesse hugged back, trying to work out how to explain the situation. He really should have thought of this sooner. “Just, uh, come in here to the living room. The thing is, Dodger, um, well—”

“The thing is you should take off that armband, you look a right prat,” John cut in, stepping out from behind the entertainment stand.

“JESUS!” Dodger screamed, leaping sideways and colliding with Jesse. John laughed.

“Well you got one letter right,” he conceded, “And the apparent rising from the dead thing, but lets not get too far into that comparison.”

“No nonono, that’s not possible,” said Dodger, “I was there, I watched them turn off the machines, and, and….Jesse, wha…”

“It’s ok Dodge,” Jesse assured her, placing his hands on her shoulders and turning her back to face John, “He’s real, he didn’t die, he just got kind of…messed up.”

“How do you mean?” Dodger’s eyes were a bit wild and she was still breathing rapidly, but she seemed to be making an effort to calm down.

“I’ll show you,” John suggested. “Do you have any water?” He knew from their years of working together that it was rare to find her without a bottle of water on her person, so he’d planned on this as a possible demonstration. Sure enough, she reached into her oversize purse and immediately pulled out a disposable water bottle, about half full. 

John pulled the glove off of his right hand and reached out as if to catch something. Obligingly, Dodger tossed him the water. He caught it gracefully, and held it up so that she could see through the clear plastic to what was happening inside. She gasped, watching the water rapidly solidify, distending the bottle as it expanded.

“How…?” she whispered.

“We don’t know,” said John, “That’s what we need your help figuring out.”


	3. part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and this is the forever cliffhanger sorry

**November 10, 7:30 pm**

“Come on Jesse, you have to make a move sometime.”

Jesse sat with his head in his hands, refusing to look at the chessboard. Maybe if he ignored it, it would just go away. He peered between his fingers. Nope, it was still there, complete with one white king cowering behind one white pawn, alone in a corner, trying in vain to escape the barely-depleted black forces occupying the rest of the board. 

“How is it even _physically possible_ to play this badly,” Jesse whined. “Remind me why I let you talk me into this?”

“You wanted to do something together and it’s the only game in the house,” John protested. “It’s not like we’ve ever had time for games, we really only had this one because it looks nice on the coffee table." 

"That’s it, I’m hitting the mall tomorrow and I’m not coming home until I have like ten games I think I can win at. Maybe even one of those console-thingies for the TV,” Jesse sulkily scooted his king over one space while talking.

“Are you kidding, it would take us a week to figure out how to run one of those things,” John sneered, sliding his queen a few spaces diagonally, “Just get some two-player board games. Checkmate, by the way." 

"Guh. Finally.”

______________________________________________________________

**November 5, 12:00 pm**

John sat on a workbench in his basement lab in their house, watching Jesse flit back and forth trying to carry out Dodger’s instructions and find her the tools she needed. She’d been subjecting John to every test and experiment she could think of for over an hour, with only puzzling results. His heart rate was normal, blood pressure normal; everything looked fine until you got to temperature. The first time they’d stuck a thermometer in his mouth, the mercury had contracted so fast the whole thing had shattered, leaving him spitting shards of glass and chunks of solid mercury into the bin. 

Dodger had been poring over a blood sample under a microscope for ages. 

“Learning anything?” John mumbled around the most recent thermometer, which was normally used to measure the extreme temperatures of highly caustic chemicals. It ought to be able to take the cold, but Jesse had insisted on triple-checking its cleanliness before it could come into contact with his husband’s mouth, so he’d spent almost half an hour washing it and they still didn’t know how cold John was actually running.

“No, the lens keeps fogging up,” Dodger said with some frustration, “and now the slide is too cold to touch. I can’t tell if it’s just taking forever to warm up because it started out so cold, or if your blood stays this cold whether it’s in you or not." 

"Could be, maybe that’s the source of the _HOW MANY BELOW ZERO???_ ” John had checked the readout on the thermometer and promptly lost his train of thought. “What no what do you mean _negative eighty Fahrenheit_ how am I alive?!?!”

“Holy shit TB, I don’t know how or why but your body chemistry is _seriously fucked up_ right now,” Dodger sighed, completely at a loss. “I don’t think we can fix this. We’d probably kill you trying. We gotta figure out how you can live like this.”

Jesse stood back in the corner, trying to keep out of the conversation. Of course it was better to keep John alive and well than to get him back to normal. So what if he had to avoid physical contact with other people for the rest of his life. So what if they had to either keep a huge secret forever or spend every day explaining his problem. That was nothing compared to keeping him safe. Right?

“I’m going upstairs for a minute, you guys want anything?” Jesse said loudly, over the others’ bickering about proteins and tolerances and a bunch of stuff he didn’t understand.

“Oh, um, no,” Dodger said, a little thrown off. “Thanks for your help." 

They watched him leave in silence. 

"Damn,” she muttered once he was gone and the door had closed. “He didn’t look too happy.”

“Would you be, if your husband was an icicle?” John snipped. “Listen Brooke, I may be able to survive like this but I highly doubt I can _live_. We’re going to have to keep working on solutions, but carefully. And let’s not get Jesse’s hopes up. I’d rather have him think he’s going to have to deal with this forever and be surprised when he doesn’t than the other way around.”

_______________________________________________________

**November 5, 5:00 pm**

The three of them pulled up to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Dodger’s car later that evening, intending to sort out what was surely a mystery of disappearing corpses, from the hospital’s point of view. John was internally dreading what kind of paperwork it must take to bring a man back from the dead, but how could he go back to work if he wasn’t legally alive? A voice actor’s wages alone can have a pretty hard time of feeding, clothing and housing two grown men, especially if they’re used to living on more. 

Something about the atmosphere inside made John uneasy. It was much too quiet. Distant machinery hummed, but there was little other sign of activity. He thought he could hear people….skulking?

“I don’t like this,” he muttered to the others. “Something isn’t on, here.”

“Gee, I wonder what you could possibly have been through that would make you paranoid right now,” Jesse said sarcastically, walking up to the front desk and ringing for a nurse, since there was nobody there. “Cool your jets, doc, we got things to take care of." 

John quirked his head as something else caught his attention. "Do you smell that? Does something smell kind of, metal, you think?" 

"It smells like hopstipal, bro,” Dodger refuted. “Disinfected, is the word you’re looking for." 

"No, it’s coming from–oh,” he followed the scent, walking around until he could get behind the desk. “We need to leave. Now.”

Jesse leaned over to see what he was looking at and paled slightly. “Aheh. Well hold on, it is a hospital. Someone could have spilled all that blood on accident. Dropped a bag or something. Or a patient–”

“You can’t see _under_ the desk, honey,” John insisted. He was starting to feel quite ill. “Please start walking. We’ll call the police from the car.”

“No you won’t, mate.”

A rather grim-looking man in a tattered jacket stood between them and the door, leveling a shotgun right at John. 

“Congratulations on slipping in the front door before we’d finished securing the perimeter,” the man continued, “You get to be the last of the hostages.”


	4. Playtime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PREQUEL PRON. Pornquel? Preporn? They're kinky fuckers and they did some stuff before they almost died.

“Honey, I’m home!” Jesse yelled cheesily, slamming the front door behind him. “God that was a long day, what do you feel like doing this evening, sugar pop?”

John looked up from his spot on the couch as Jesse walked into the living room. He seemed to have something to say, but hesitated, instead blushing and looking back down at his hands. 

“Speak up, man, I’m not–oh,” Jesse stopped a few feet away from John when he saw what the younger man was holding. 

A thick, black, studded-leather collar rested in John’s hands. One might be tempted to call it a dog collar at first, but it was very clearly designed for a human neck. It looked to be just about John’s size, in fact. 

The Brit’s gaze rose gradually from the collar back to Jesse’s face, noting his already-visible arousal along the way. Fearful desire showed on John’s face. Very slowly, Jesse approached and knelt on the couch seat beside him. The pair did not break eye contact as Jesse reached into John’s lap to retrieve the collar and buckled it, gently, around his husband’s neck. 

John exhaled shakily and closed his eyes, relieved, aroused and anxious at once. Thank god, Jesse had accepted his offer. Oh god. Jesse had accepted his offer. That’s what the collar was really for, of course, to give John a way to put himself on a silver platter and say “well, how about it?” with a little extra flair. But Jesse could say no, he said no all the time. All he had to do was _not_ put the collar on him. They barely ever went through with it. When they did, though….the memories of those times would haunt John in the best way for the rest of his life. 

There was a subtle change in the air as the dynamic shifted between them. No longer were they two men in love, equals and caring partners. There was only master and possession. 

****************************************

Fifteen minutes later John was kneeling on the bedroom floor, naked except for the collar, a blindfold, and a complex network of smooth ropes criss-crossing his body and restricting his movements entirely. As usual, he was un-gagged but not allowed to speak unless he needed to use a safeword. 

He held perfectly still, waiting to see what was in store for him next. His skin tingled and he shivered slightly at the memory of Jesse roughly undressing him and then gently but firmly trussing him up. He could hear movements in the room, but the other man was giving no indications of his plan. 

Finally he felt a hand on his cheek, Jesse’s signal that he was about to break character for a moment. He usually did this once at the start. John almost wished he wouldn’t, but the once or twice Jesse had skipped this step were the only times John had genuinely feared for his safety. And when he got scared, _really_ scared, that’s when safewords would come out and the fun would stop. 

“You know what to say if it’s too much,” Jesse whispered in his ear. The traditional reassurance. “‘Castle’ and I’ll tone it down, 'checkmate’ and it’s over, the collar comes off. Got it?”

John nodded, rubbing his face into Jesse’s palm.

“Say it,” Jesse said sternly.

“I remember. I’ve got it.”

“Good,” Jesse kissed him lightly on the cheek, then pulled away roughly and slapped him hard across the other side of his face. “No talking.”

John rocked back on his toes, cheeks burning, but kept silent. He was nothing more than Jesse’s toy now. Toys don’t talk. Toys don’t struggle. Toys get played with. And they like it.

Something thin and leathery trailed across his chest. John just had time to suspect what it was before it suddenly jerked away and snapped back with a loud smack, leaving a sharp sting where it struck his shoulder. The riding crop. 

Each blow of the crop left a fiery red mark on his skin. It wasn’t a harsh beating, but it didn’t need to be. Bound and blinded, all John could feel was the rug beneath his knees and the painful kiss of the crop striking him at random, teasing him. He never knew where it would touch him next; arms, legs, shoulders, back, stomach, chest–small cries escaped him when it revisited an old welt, renewing and redoubling the pain in that spot. With Jesse silent and removed, making no contact except with the crop, John was alone in a dark and abusive world. His breathing picked up. His cries became more frequent and urgent. 

Just when the fear started to kick in, he felt a hand on the back of his head and his face was suddenly pressed into a warm, familiar place. Whimpering, he nuzzled more deeply against the soft flesh presented to him, burying his nose in the coarse, curly hair and breathing in the comforting musk. 

The crop touched lightly against the small of his back, slowly tracing circles, threatening more to come.

“Lick,” Jesse commanded quietly. 

Hastily, John opened his mouth to comply, turning a little to his left to take Jesse’s pulsing erection into his mouth. A sharp crack resounded through the room as the crop dealt its hardest blow yet to John’s backside. 

“No,” Jesse growled. His hand shifted to the top of John’s head and pushed him down a couple of inches. “I said _lick.”_

A little confused and trembling slightly from the unexpected strike, John opened his mouth once more. He extended his tongue gingerly until it made contact, and then understood. With renewed eagerness he lavished his tongue over the objects in front of him, savoring the rich, salty taste of his master’s testicles. He’d do anything to not be alone with the whip anymore, but it wasn’t that simple. Balls are delicate. There’s a balance to how much attention they can take. Every time he got too excited and treated them too roughly, the crop delivered punishment. Every time he got too scared and didn’t stimulate them enough, it was the same. Soon his entire ass was striped red with evidence of his mistakes.

“That’s enough,” Jesse said after a short time, wrenching John away by his hair. John gasped; he’d fucked up, he hadn’t done well enough, he was losing his contact with Master. He was going to be alone with the pain again. He shuddered a little, but kept silent. He had no place to protest or complain. The tip of the crop trailed firmly up from his rear and began to trace around his hip, thudding against his skin every time it crossed rope, steadily progressing until it came to rest against his inner thigh. Pausing there only for half a second, it then jerked up so that the length of the crop was pressing against John’s entire manhood, right between his own balls and along his whole shaft. He yelped in shock. “Time for something new,” Jesse whispered.

The hand and the whip suddenly vanished, leaving John entirely isolated. His heart pounded in his ears. What did he mean, something new? New this time, as in something they normally did that they hadn’t done tonight, or…. _new_ new? 

There was a loud click, and something very cold touched his back in a couple of places. Jesse’s hands appeared on his hips from behind, giving him a possessive but reassuring squeeze before disappearing again. A soft creak. Tension and pressure in the ropes around his body, and then–

John’s knees left the ground. _Very new_. He gasped in terror as he fell forward, certain that he would hit his face on the floor, but he’d been reeled up too quickly for that and instead swung gently in empty space, even more disoriented and alone than before. He bit his lip, whimpering loudly enough that it sounded like he might start crying any moment. Suddenly Jesse’s hand was on his cheek again. John was almost furious with him for breaking the mood, until he spoke.

“Can you breathe?” Jesse asked, all business. John nodded. “Does it hurt more than you want it to?” He shook his head. “Good." 

And the hand was gone again, that was it, not "are you scared”, “do you feel ok” or “should I stop”, just a quick checkup on vital signs. John’s mind clicked back immediately into his role as an object. Even when Master showed concern for him, it was only to be sure he hadn’t broken his toy. 

The world spun without warning, then jerked to a stop. He was alone in the void.

“Those welts look awful nasty,” Jesse said quietly.

John cried out with shock, but it took his brain a few seconds to process why. The dull sting and heat of each mark left by the whip was being replaced with a blinding streak of cold. Jesse had brought ice. 

Where the original beating had been random and sporadic, the application of the ice was terrifyingly slow and systematic, spiraling around his body. The cold and wet progressed steadily from John’s shoulders down as he swayed gently in the air, giving him a lot of time to think about how it was going to feel on his most sensitive parts. Each time the ice touched him the flesh around it instantly raised into goosebumps. By the time it had reached his navel he was shivering constantly. The melted runoff trickled down his skin until it reached the ropes, making them soggy and uncomfortable. 

Finally the ice reached his much-abused ass, tracing over the long strokes left there as punishment for his inept attentions to Master. One stroke on each side, alternating, starting at the outside and working inward each time. The melt-off ran to the lowest point, chilling his groin. Once it reached the center line, the ice was forced between his cheeks, just at the top, and started to slide down, ever so slowly, threatening his most vulnerable spot.

John started to panic. Was that going to go _in_ him? He tensed, trying to pull away, but he had nothing to pull against. No leverage. No escape. He opened his mouth, tempted to shout “Castle!” but never had the chance.

Instead, a long and desperate scream poured out of him. The ice clattered to the floor after pinging off the wall where Jesse had thrown it. John panted desperately, trying to come to grips with the fact that this new pain, this much, much better pain, was the feeling of Master’s cock suddenly plunging into him in one thrust, without warning or preparation. Lube, yes, only because he didn’t want to break his toy. 

Jesse stood rooted in place, using the ropes to move John so that he felt nothing but the hard flesh buried inside him. So that he was alone in the dark with only the sensation of being fucked to cling to. And just like before, when he’d been on his knees with his face crushed into Jesse’s crotch, it was a tremendous relief. 

At last the punishment was over. Master didn’t want to see him squirm anymore. Master was ready to be pleased, to use him. John’s thoughts and desires spiraled away from the sane and practical, begging internally for things he would never truly want. _Break me, Master_ , he pleaded in his mind, _Destroy me._

Jesse’s arms started to tire and he was forced to thrust with his hips.

 _Split me in half_.

He shifted his grip, seizing John’s hair with one hand.

 _Tear me apart_.

Heat pooled in John’s stomach, the intensity of Master inside him was too much.

_Use me up and throw away the pieces!_

John cried out, helpless, as his release fired out of him into the emptiness. But Jesse wasn’t finished. There was a flurry of movement, John registered none of it in his haze until he found himself hanging upside-down with Master thrusting down into him roughly. 

He was completely lost now, the world was gone as far as he was concerned. All he had was the darkness, the dizziness and his master’s cock. That beautiful, magnificent cock driving into him again and again; the only wonderful thing that existed! Jesse’s hand appeared from nowhere to grab John’s balls–that was the last straw. His touch sent John over the edge again, streams of cum arcing through the air. This time Jesse joined him, grunting in satisfaction as his own seed flowed into his plaything.

After a moment, John felt the softness of their bed beneath him. Things around him clicked and creaked as Jesse put something away. He lay quietly, trembling with exhaustion, exhilaration and leftover lust. The ropes around his body went slack and unwound. He let his limbs fall into relaxed positions. The blindfold was slipped from his face, but he kept his eyes closed for the moment. 

Then, finally, the collar was unbuckled. John opened his eyes to see his loving husband lying beside him, smiling.

“Two for the price of one, huh?” Jesse whispered, “I guess I don’t have to ask if you had fun.”

John smiled back and pulled himself over to Jesse, snuggling up into his chest. He had to focus on his breathing, it always took some time to readjust to being a real person again. A little time spent being held gently usually went a long way toward getting his head straight again. 

“I’m going to make such sweet, tender love to you tomorrow,” John whispered eventually. Jesse grinned; the days of soft intimacy that followed a night like this were one of his favorite things about this arrangement.

“You sure you won’t be too tired?” Jesse kidded.

“Hey now,” John protested, “Just because I had two doesn’t mean I won’t be ready. I’ve got a whole day to recover.”

“Well, you’ve got that tour to give tomorrow, though,” supplied Jesse. “Investors coming by the lab, right? Hard to build up your strength for me if you use it all on them.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll save you some,” John said smugly. “Love you, Jesse.”

“Love you too John.”


End file.
